Movie Review: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

WARNING: SPOILERS

A British girl, born to a Danish and Irish couple, and raised by an African-American man, teams up with a cute Mexican dude, two Chinese guys, and a Brit-Pakistani, not to mention a straightforwardly rude American droid, to steal the Death Star plans that wind up in R2-D2 in “Stars Wars IV: A New Hope.” You’d think with this kind of casting, which is so international it makes the U.N. seem monochromatic, that the movie would’ve done better abroad. It did fine: $500 mil and counting. But “Star Wars” movies tend to make 52%-56% of their gross overseas, while “Rogue One,” despite the cast, has managed just 49 percent.

If this doesn’t change, what does that say about all of the carefully constructed international casts Hollywood keeps putting together?

Sigh.

It's almost enough to make you want to go back to just white dudes.

Y Tu Rebellion TambienThe one intriguing aspect of “Rogue One” for me is that instead of thinking, “OK, how are they going to get out of this one?”—as we normally do—here, if you know the backstory, if you know this is essentially “Star Wars 3.5,” you’re thinking: “OK, how are they going to die?”

None of these rebels are going to make it into other stories. We know that. Wasn’t there even a line in “Star Wars” about the rebels who sacrificed for the Death Star plans? So that’s what we anticipate: sacrifice rather than triumph. Which I found mildly interesting. For a few minutes.

But director Gareth Edwards (“Godzilla”), and screenwriters Chris Weitz (“About a Boy”) and Tony Gilroy (Bourne movies), still blow it. For the sacrifice of Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) and Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) to have meaning, you have to care about them, and I didn’t. Not the way I cared about Obi-wan Kenobi in 1977. Not the way I cared about Rey and Finn last year. I’m not sure why this is. Because I like Daisy Ridley and Felicity Jones leaves me cold? Because Rey’s background is mysterious and Jyn’s is not? Because Jyn seems petulant throughout and Rey is determined? All of the above?

As for Cassian, well, it’s nice that Luna finally gets his blockbuster close-up nearly 15 years after “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” but ... a rebel leader? I didn’t buy it. He’s too pretty, too slight. His backstory is opaque—he lets Jyn know that he lost family, too, so she’ll stop thinking the galaxy revolves around her—but it’s not intriguing. His great dilemma is whether or not to assassinate Jyn’s father. We know which way he’ll go. His morality is our universe’s rather than his.

The filmmakers want to give us a slightly more complex world but within the same whooshy roller-coaster ride, and the combo isn’t great. Just once I’d like to see the heroes get out of a scrape by a mile rather than inches. I’d like them to look at their watches and go, “Oh yeah, we’ve got plenty of time.”

The entire movie is an attempt to explain away a “Star Wars” plot hole: Why did the Empire design a Death Star with such an obvious flaw as this exhaust port? Turns out it’s a feature not a bug. The architect, Jyn’s father, Galen (Mads Mikkelsen), designed the flaw so the weapon could be destroyed. Except ... if that's the case, couldn’t he have made it more accessible? You need the Force to make it work. You need a young Jedi making a million-to-one shot. Plus it raises more plot holes. Why didn’t Galen talk about the design flaw in the message he leaked out? Or why didn’t he simply leak the Death Star schematics? In some ways, the attempted correction is worse than the plot hole—particularly if, per this video, you didn’t think it was much of a plot hole.

We get to visit three new “Star Wars” planets in the sand/ice/swamp mode:

The Tibet one

The rainy one

Palm Beach

The Tibet one is where they receive the message from Galen. The rainy one is where Galen isn’t assassinated by Cassian (but dies anyway). The Palm Beach one is where the Empire’s records, including the Death Star plans, are stored. The Empire blows it up anyway. Records, schmecords. It blows up Tibet, too. It keeps testing the Death Star on a city-wide scale. Alderaan was never the first. Once again, each new “Star Wars” movie adds incongruity to the original.

The Jedi's anger translator
I like Mads but he bored me here. Forest Whitaker’s Saw Gerrera with his respirator comes off as either C-grade Darth or Frank Booth in the making. I was happy to see a real martial artist (Donnie Yen) playing a Jedi, Chirrit Imwe, and he gets off the best line in the film (“Are you kidding me? I’m blind.”); and I liked the Buddhist mantra he chants, a variation of “Star Wars”’ most famous line (“I am one with the Force, the Force is with me”); but having the gun-toting Baze Malbus (Wen Jiang) behind him is a little like having Obama’s anger translator along for the ride.

The parallels to our world used to be vague but now they’re more explicit, and I don’t think that’s a good thing. Chirrit is too much Tibetan Buddhist; the rebels on the final assault are too much like U.S. troops before Normandy. The fanboys’ love for Darth Vader is also made more explicit—disturbingly so. In the end, when he takes on all the pasty-faced rebel forces, tossing them around like so many rag dolls, the film revels in it. It thrills at it. It’s saying: “We know this is what you really want. And so do we.”

Two dead actors make appearances: Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher. Both look fake and video-gamey. CG hasn’t been able to recreate the life in the eye yet, so we’re safe for the moment. I think of John Ford’s line about what to shoot on a rainy day in Monument Valley: “The most interesting and exciting thing in the whole world: the human face.” That’s still there, if enough of us are interested; if too many of us haven’t already gone over to the dark side.